


all hallows' eve

by glundergun (cleardishwashers)



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-20 23:37:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21290054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/glundergun
Summary: the gang does trick-or-treating (but only vaguely)happy birthday codi!! <33
Relationships: Charlie Kelly & Mac McDonald & Dee Reynolds & Dennis Reynolds & Frank Reynolds
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	all hallows' eve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [playboicarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/playboicarti/gifts).

Dee adjusts the mask so that it sits more comfortably across the bridge of her nose, brushing some of the stray glitter off her face. It’s a cheap thing, purchased at Michaels or something for five bucks, but it’s pretty.

She had one like it when she was a kid— that one was hot pink and feathery, not the dark red of her current one, but it had the same amount of elegant grandeur that would be expected of a masquerade ball mask. Then again, the one she had when she was a kid was something like fifty bucks, and it wasn’t shedding glitter like an overly furry cat.

Dennis’s costume that year had been three times as expensive as hers. He’d wanted to go as a Transformer, and Barbara had paid some asshole to construct an exact replica, while Dee had been stuck with the secondhand princess dress from the thrift shop. The mask had been the one thing new, after a long, drawn-out battle between Frank and Barbara. Every house they went to, Dennis, in his shiny new piece of shit Transformers costume, had gotten all the attention anyways, but Dee kept the mask in a box under her bed until Mac’s stupid fucking dog had torn it to shreds.

She shakes her head, as if that’ll dislodge the memories, and she steps out into the bar. “What do you think?” she asks, knowing full well that none of the assholes will care.

“Didn’t you do this entire  _ masquerade ball _ thing, like, thirty years ago?” Dennis asks, pointing at her with his beer bottle.

_ “You’re _ one to talk,  _ Luigi,” _ Dee snaps back, raising her eyebrows at him and Mac. “You’ve tried this costume, like, five times.”

“Key word being  _ tried, _ Dee,” Mac says, grinning. “This time we  _ succeeded.” _

“You still look incredibly weird,” she says. “And creepy. I mean, two Italian guys—”

“Nope! I will not hear anything racist on Halloween,” Mac says.

Dennis frowns. “What the hell are you— you know that Halloween is, like, the most racist holiday ever? Everyone going around doing caricatures, and—”

“Oh my God, will you guys shut up so we can play Nightcrawlers?” Charlie hollers from the other end of the bar. Dee turns to look at him and immediately regrets it— both he and Frank are dressed in ridiculous worm costumes, and the costumes are the least strange part of it.

“How the hell did they even come up with that game, anyway?” Dee muses.

“I think they were on coke or something. Anyways, you know you’re, like, super late, right?” Mac says. “It’s, like,  _ eleven.” _

“I was busy getting my costume together.” Dee frowns and smooths over the folds of her gown. “Because unlike  _ some _ people, I like to put— wait, did you say it was  _ eleven?” _

“Wow, I didn’t know birds were deaf,” Dennis remarks.

“Shut up. Where the hell is everyone?” Dee asks. She doesn’t really give a shit if they get business or not, because Frank’s shady practices have always kept them afloat, but it’s easier to ignore Mac and Dennis’s comments when there’s people packing the bar. “We’re usually full on Halloween!”

“Yeah, people are getting wiser to the shittiness of this place,” Dennis tells her. “I figure we’ll get some stragglers around two, but until then…”

Dee frowns and grabs a bottle of tequila. If she’s spending her Halloween sitting around on her phone, she might as well do it drunk.

Turns out that scrolling through an endless feed of horrifically curated Instagram photos is harder to do when you’re doing it in Paddy’s Pub. It starts when Charlie makes some comment about global warming, and it ends when Dee smashes her tequila bottle over Frank’s head. The bastard doesn’t even have the decency to pass out. Goddamn thick-skulled shithead.

She steps gingerly around the shards on the floor in order to snag Mac’s unattended beer bottle. He flips her off and she ignores him like she’s ignoring Frank’s glares. “I’m not apologizing to you, asshole,” she tells him.

“You broke a goddamn tequila bottle over my head!”

“‘Cause you were being a dick!”

“You know how goddamn thick tequila bottles are?”

“Obviously not thicker than your skull!”

“I coulda died! I could have brain damage!”

“I’m more surprised that you’re not  _ already _ brain damaged!”

“Can you two shut  _ up?” _ Dennis asks. “Anyways, Dee, he’s right! My costume’s just better than yours!”

“Oh my—  _ how?! _ How in the goddamn shit—”

“Okay,  _ A, _ it’s  _ funny—” _

“Well, I didn’t just throw on some goddamn overalls—”

“Charlie, back me up here. My costume is better, right?”

“Uhh… actually, man…”

“Oh, goddamnit. Mac—”

“Mac doesn’t fucking count, you’re, like, a package set! Of course he’s not gonna vote against you!”

“It’s still technically three to two, you goddamn bitch!”

“No, it—”

“Oh my  _ God, _ can you two ever shut up?” Charlie asks. “Let’s just go around the neighborhood and ask people! And, y’know, maybe we’ll get candy!”

Realization slowly dawns on her. “Ho-ly  _ shit. _ You just wanna go trick-or-treating!”

“So what if I— y’know, I got literal razor blades in my candy, like, every year!”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Mac admits. “I almost swallowed one when I was eleven.”

Dennis snorts. “And you think that this neighborhood will be any better?”

“Can we get back to why the fucking hell we’d— we’re almost  _ forty-five!” _ Dee insists.

She hasn’t gone trick-or-treating since the Transformer incident. She’s not going to fucking—

“If you don’t go trick-or-treating with me I’m voting for Dennis’s costume.”

Dee’s jaw drops. She shuts her eyes slowly. There’s no way out of this, not without admitting defeat.  _ “Fine.” _

The first house they go to, the occupant throws a bottle at them. The second house’s occupant gives them the crumbs of a pot brownie and doesn’t say a word about the costumes. The third house has a very sketchy party going on, and they get laughed away from the fourth. “Goddamnit, Charlie, this isn’t fucking  _ working!” _ Dee says.

“Okay, you need to just— let’s just try this one house,” Charlie says, already halfway up the steps. “C’mon.”

“Dee, don’t be a killjoy,” Mac says.

“Goddamn bird,” Dennis mutters.

“Jesus Christ—”

Charlie knocks, and the door swings open to reveal a woman wearing solely a humongous grey hoodie. “What the shit do you want?” the lady says.

“Whose costume is better?” Dee asks. Her feet ache and her head is swimming from the tequila and she is  _ not _ in the mood to play nice.

“The worm guys. Now, why are four forty-somethings and an old man trick-or-treating?”

Dennis gapes at her. “How the hell—”

“Nope,” the woman replies. “You get a question, I get a question. Why?”

Dee sighs. “We’re not—”

Charlie cuts her off. “Ma’am, thank you for your time, and if you  _ are _ open to the concept of us trick-or-treating, we’d—”

“I’ll give you the goddamn candy once you tell me.”

“We just need to find out whose costume is better, goddamnit!” Dee snaps. “Me or my dickwad brother!”

“How in the hell am I supposed to know who’s your brother?” the woman asks.

“God! Can we just get this  _ over _ with!” Dennis yells.

“Never mind, you’re obviously the same level of bitchy.”

“Just—  _ ugh!” _ Dee shrieks. “Whose! Goddamn! Costume!”

“I told you! Worm guys!”

“I meant between me and him!”

“Worm guys!” the woman repeats, and she pulls a bag of Snickers out of her pocket, throws it at them, and then slams the door shut.

Dee raises her hand to knock on the door again, and before her knuckles can strike the wood, the door flies open once more. “By the way, I wouldn’t recommend going any farther up this street. They get more violent as you go along.” And then it’s shut once more.

Dee lets out a frustrated groan. “Goddamnit!”

“Well, look on the bright side,” Frank says, already tearing open the bag. “The ol’ bitch gave us candy!”

“Yeah, so it’s not all bad,” Charlie adds.

The fight has leached out of her sometime in the past five seconds. “You’re just saying that because she complimented your worm costumes,” she sighs, grabbing a piece of candy from the bag and unwrapping it. The flavor is on the very edge of too sweet, but it doesn’t taste terrible.

“I still think our costumes were better,” Mac says, but he’s grabbing a Snickers too, so he can’t be too pissed about it. Dee is never going to understand how the two of them can think that, but all of them can agree to disagree for now, and then they can rehash it all in the morning.


End file.
